Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris each unleashed a new wave of television ads Tuesday as they race to secure an advantage in a presidential campaign dramatically altered in recent weeks.
In its first major ad blitz targeting Harris, the Trump campaign is zeroing in on her immigration record in ads running across several key battleground states. It’s a sign that the former president has settled on a longstanding GOP line of attack against the vice president, after grappling with the abrupt change atop the Democratic ticket.
Harris, meanwhile, unveiled a minute-long ad entitled “Fearless” that offers highlights of her career dating to her tenure as a prosecutor in the Bay Area of California – as she scrambles to introduce herself as the prospective nominee to voters following President Joe Biden’s decision to end his reelection bid. It’s part of what the Harris campaign said will be a $50 million blitz in the run-up to next month’s Democratic National Convention – fueled, in part, by the record-breaking fundraising the Harris campaign has seen since Biden’s departure from the race and endorsement of her candidacy a little more than a week ago.
Trump, in two new campaign ads, seeks to define Harris on his terms by relying on what has been a political liability for the Biden administration: the management of the US-Mexico border.
Republicans have jumped on an assignment given to Harris – the task of addressing the root causes of migration in Central America – to cast her falsely as the nation’s “border czar” and as solely responsible for the record number of migrant arrivals at the US southern border over the last three years.
Both Trump campaign ads pull from a 2021 NBC interview during which Harris was pressed about the fact that she hadn’t yet visited the US-Mexico border and she stumbled through a response by claiming she also hadn’t yet gone to Europe – an answer that perplexed administration officials at the time.
Another shows a video of Harris dancing at an event, stating: “This is America’s border czar – and she’s failed us.”
The ads conclude with a description of Harris as “failed. Weak. Dangerously liberal.”
In response, Harris campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said Trump is “running on his trademark lies” and said the former president opposed a congressional border deal that would have helped with enforcement.
Harris’ root cause work dates to March 2021. During an influx of unaccompanied migrant children, Biden tasked the vice president with overseeing diplomatic efforts in Central America. While Harris focused on long-term fixes, the Department of Homeland Security remained responsible for overseeing border security.
As the vice president’s campaign takes shape and as immigration remains a top issue for voters, her team is forced to contend with an assignment that, sources say, has showed early success in Central America as a result of major private-sector investment but that’s been bundled with the administration’s larger migration issues.
The Trump campaign so far has reserved about $12.2 million in advertising across six battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – through August 12, according to data from AdImpact, which tracks media buying.
Even as she seeks to introduce herself to voters, Harris’ new campaign ad also goes on the attack against Trump, using some of the vice president’s remarks at her first rally as the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.
“Donald Trump wants to take our country backward,” Harris can be heard saying in the ad. “To give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and end the Affordable Care Act. But we are not going back.”
In a statement, Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon noted the former president’s May felony conviction for falsifying business records and said that Harris’ career – ranging from a courtroom prosecutor and California attorney general to her current role in the Biden administration – makes her “uniquely suited to take on Donald Trump.”
The new Harris ad, according to the campaign, will air during the Olympics along with other programs – such as “Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta,” “The Bachelorette” and “The Daily Show” – that target demographic groups the campaign is trying to reach.